Israel's worst nightmare

Iran's impending nuclear weapons are an existential threat to Israel, and have already changed the terms of political discussion there. Writing in The New Republic, Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi present a must-read discussion of Iran as Israel's worst nightmare.For over two decades, since the era of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the Holocaust was rarely invoked, except on the extremes, in Israeli politics. In recent months, though, the Iranian threat has returned the Final Solution to the heart of Israeli discourse. Senior army commanders, who likely once regarded Holocaust analogies with the Middle East conflict as an affront to Zionist empowerment, now routinely speak of a "second Holocaust." Op-eds, written by left-wing as well as right-wing commentators, compare these times to the 1930s.Read the whole thing. Available here for non-sunscribers to the New Republic. (Read Full Post)